For those of us on the faculty, the concept of “furlough days” is as disconnected from reality as the concept of “sick days.”
Every month we have to fill out and submit a form that lists the specific hours on specific days that we took “sick leave.” The bureaucratic fiction behind this ritual is that faculty work 9-5 days and 40-hour weeks and that any day missed because of a cold is a day of productivity lost forever.
The reality, of course, is that most of us continue to work on evenings and weekends when those in many other careers have punched out at 5pm and left their work behind to focus completely on their families, home responsibilities, and maybe even a little recreation. Most of us faculty simply do what needs to be done to meet our teaching, research and service obligations, regardless of whether that means a 40- or 80-hour week.
Whatever days we’re taken out of action by illness will be made up sooner or later. Lectures have to be rescheduled; exams and homework assignments have to be written and graded; papers have to be submitted by conference deadlines. By the end of a typical academic year, the same stuff will have been done — has to be done — with or without any days off for illness in between.
The same is patently true for furlough days as well. No one is actually taking those days off, even if we aren’t physically in our office. This long Thanksgiving weekend, I have theses to read, journal papers to revise, and course notes to develop. And sometime before Monday, I will do all three.
In short, the furlough is really nothing more than a pay cut for equal work, and everyone affected knows this. Only the state bureaucrats can’t seem to come right out and say it, requiring us instead to go through the ridiculous and meaningless exercise of choosing the dates for our four flexible furlough days this academic year (today, of course, is a non-flexible one).
We have been instructed not to schedule our personal furlough days in such a way that the University’s functions are actually impaired in any visible way. Classes must still be taught. Offices must still be open. In other words, the same work must get done.
An unfortunate consequence of this policy is that we give credence to the corrosive myth that the faculty have so much idle time on their hands that they can all go fishing for 8 days in a calendar year and no one will miss them. This myth plays right into the hands of those who are already predisposed to oppose increases in the University’s budget for faculty salaries and retention packages. Those folks might say, “You faculty bums took off eight days last year and the University kept humming along without even a hiccup. Say, why don’t you just go ahead and take eight unpaid days off every year?”
For all that, is there anything about the furlough we can be thankful for? Todd Finkelmeyer of the Cap Times suggests that there is: the extra day to spend with families that we might not otherwise have. And in that, he’s right. Though, as I said, the day taken off now will just come out of future time off. For University faculty, it’s a zero sum exercise.
But here’s what I am thankful for: the furlough, for all its illogic, is still a temporary pay cut of about 3%. By default, there will be no more furloughs in two years unless active steps are taken to impose them again. By contrast, an actual salary cut, labeled honestly as such, would require active steps to reverse it in future years. I’d much rather be in the first of these two positions.
But ultimately, what will matter for faculty morale (and, therefore, for both productivity and retention) is whether we have any hope of returning soon to a fiscal climate in which excellence in teaching and research is rewarded in any meaningful way. For readers who are new to this site, here is a piece from two years ago on that topic. But keep in mind that that article was based on old information — part of the meager raise package referred to then was subsequently revoked.
I would argue that the above applies to academic staff as well. We will not be processing less financial aid applications, admissions applications, grant submissions, teaching fewer classes or advising fewer students due to the furlough. In addition, many academic staff are strapped with the additional requirement of working no more than 32 hours during a furlough week. That means making up the work the week before or after.